A Crafter’s Christmas starts in July

One of my ultimate goals it to be the house on the block that everyone shakes their heads at come Christmas time. The ones that are so ridiculously over the top that people refer to us as the Griswold house. I don’t know that it will ever happen on the outside. Right now our house is in a very tightly spaced neighborhood and we really don’t have a front lawn. Our house is maybe four feet away from the street and maybe just a touch further away from our neighbors (That’s Southern California for you.). We don’t really have a ton of room to work here. Plus, with our next house I really want to have some land, so we might be too far away from the street to bother with light displays.

At any rate, I’ve been trying to make up for our outward lack of Christmas enthusiasm by doubling up on the inside. Last year I debuted our 12 days of Christmas tree, and this year I want to add a third tree based on falling snow. In my head all the ornaments are snowflakes or icicles or snowballs, with touches of mirrors and pearls and a million little white lights to keep it fancy. Now that I’m starting to cross off some things on my to do list, I can start putting my plan to work.

The first item I’ve made is a garland, and it couldn’t be simpler.

All I did was thread the fake pearls onto a huge length of fishing line, and use some shimmery glitter puff paint I had lying around to hold the pearls in position.

I could’ve used any old glue I had on hand, but since I already had this I thought a little bit of glitter peaking out the sides could only add to the shimmer.

My philosophy on decorating trees is always more is more, so I frequently hang three ornaments from one branch to give the tree depth. Because of that, I think I’ll probably put this garland on last so I can arrange a little pearl everywhere I need one last little touch of something.